Hey all, long time no post! Here or anywhere else on the internet. I needed some quiet time to myself, after getting so sick from overwork and not knowing how to truly switch off and recover properly. It means I haven’t been drawing much at all the past year… I’ve been learning to look after myself instead. It’s a little sad that the two weren’t syncing at all together, but it seems that too much of my self-worth was invested in whether I succeeded at jobs or personal projects, or generally made other people happy with my art. I didn’t want to let anyone down, and I had so many different projects and plans, but the fear of failing at everything — at my entire life — dominated every waking moment so much, that it has made me repeatedly let people down anyway, despite the good intentions. Intentions that nobody truly benefits from unless I actually manage to make the gifts to give them at all. I felt I was becoming nothing but talk and disappointment more and more as time went on, as I let these fears destroy all motivation.

So some time off really did help. I joined a local messianic congregation late last year, not knowing a single person there, and it was really nice to “hide” my art from them all for a while, especially while I was trying to push past a lifetime of social anxiety and general awkwardness as it was, to actually start getting out and meeting people IRL. To them, “that artist lady” wasn’t who I was, at least to start. I didn’t have to feel defined or limited by that single skill — or worse, by feeling awful for how little I had been using it. I found I could be a decent person, a sorta chatty one even, even with no obvious work-centered worth. Idk, it sounds simple but it’s been so nice.

Current wall I’m hitting though, is I’ve looked after myself a bit too vigorously. I’ve fallen out of the work habit so much by trying to focus on what I personally enjoy doing first, that I almost don’t know how to begin being disciplined again. At least when it comes to art. I know what I have to do, but aaaahhgh. It’s so easy to give up doing anything when you let fear take control. The routine and planning just needs to become a priority again! And I know staying on top of things with a healthy sense of balance will be its own reward. The next big step after that, is to figure out how not to completely shut down when taking or asking money for my work is involved. I think separating my self-worth from it all like I’ve been working on will be the linchpin. It’s not 100% there yet, maybe not even 50% at this point, but it will be.

But anyway! These marker pieces I’m sharing are nearly all of the color work I’ve done this year. They’re done with a combo of Copic, Promarker, and Blick Studio, with a little Col-Erase pencil and micron pens too. Instead of feeling ashamed of not drawing more, or trying to think of a “bigger plan” for them, I’m going to go ahead share them because you know what, I know people enjoy seeing them and they’re pretty. I’ve ordered some Ohuhu pastel and skin tone markers that’ll be here just after my birthday, so it’ll be fun having inexpensive but reliable markers to mess around with as I get back into a creative routine. I’ll try to share my thoughts on them after I use them for a while.

I have a couple other fun personal updates to share too, but they can wait for another post :]